Melanie Garson, Associate Professor in International Security and Conflict Resolution from University College London talked with CGTN Europe about the difficulties of the hostage negotiation in Israel-Palestine conflict.
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00:00 Well, let's talk now to Melanie Garson, who's an associate professor in international security
00:04 and conflict resolution at University College London. Good to see you, Melanie. Thank you
00:08 for joining us. So negotiations continuing. How difficult are they? What sort of assurances
00:13 are both sides looking for?
00:15 Thank you very much. And good afternoon. I think right now we're operating in an extremely
00:24 fragile state in the sense that negotiating on a day by day basis is beginning to degrade.
00:32 It's beginning to see the change of parameters with particularly the names coming out from
00:39 the commerce side of being very piecemeal. It's a fight for every name and working along
00:46 those parameters where it's practically being renegotiated constantly is a significant danger.
00:54 And it's unlikely to be able to be continued like this for a number of days.
01:00 So we've been seeing these sort of day by day extensions so far, haven't we? The international
01:04 community wants a longer lasting peace agreement. How challenging is this?
01:12 It's going to be extraordinarily challenging, and particularly with what we're seeing with
01:17 the expansion now of the violence into Maynizov with that expanded violence, because what's
01:25 being seen is in return for the hostages that have Palestinian former prisoners or prisoners
01:31 being released, those releases are creating a sense of emboldenment. We're seeing the
01:37 expansion of that conflict. So it's not reassuring or creating internally the reassurances of
01:45 stability that can go forward. That's going to add an additional hurdle for the negotiation
01:51 for looking at any long term solution. And without further evidence from commerce at
01:58 this point of proof of life of many of the people they're negotiating, the continued
02:04 negotiation is going to be difficult. And the general feeling that I've been getting
02:11 is that it's unlikely to continue the ceasefire past Friday as we're looking at it.
02:17 So what about the role of other countries in this negotiations, countries like Egypt
02:22 and particularly Qatar? Do they now have enough leverage after all these weeks of negotiations
02:26 so far to perhaps try and make some meaningful progress?
02:31 Well, I mean, we've seen a huge amount of involvement from Qatar, a country that doesn't
02:38 traditionally have diplomatic relations of any sort with Israel, but happened to have
02:44 that deep involvement with Hamas, having funded Hamas, having Hamas leaders sit on their territory
02:51 to be able to form some kind of leverage of them. Also, Egypt has emerged, but their role
02:58 is less focused on, but their role has been extremely significant, particularly within
03:03 facilitating the hostage transfers and particularly with their view looking towards a day zero
03:09 scenario and sort of calling for demilitarization of Gaza. So those players are extremely important.
03:15 I think the question of what we're seeing, particularly with the hostage releases, is
03:19 what's becoming increasingly clear. And we've saw this rather command and control over who
03:26 is holding the various hostages has become very fragmented. They're being held across
03:31 different groups in different areas. We see that today with the release of just two people
03:36 instead of the whole group together. So they're clearly being held in different places. And
03:41 that's adding another level of complexity, but even the leverage that Qatar or Egypt
03:46 can place over any of these groups.
03:49 Melanie, good to talk to you today. Thank you very much for joining us. That's Melanie
03:53 Garson from University College London.